1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to security methods of electronic devices and, more particularly, to a method of providing a means to prevent unauthorized use or theft of electronic equipment.
2. Background Description
The accelerated pace of integration and rapid miniaturization of electronic equipment, such as personal computers (PC), laptop personal computers, digital cameras, and video recording equipment, and similar equipment makes these expensive systems highly portable and easily susceptible to unauthorized use and theft. This problem can be further extended to larger home appliances, motor vehicles, electronic locks, and other consumer products.
These types of electronic equipment have no means to disable the equipment and render them useless in order to prevent unauthorized use or theft. The problems resulting from theft or unauthorized of such equipment often leads to the financial loss and inconvenience of procuring a new system, or the owner's proprietary information and confidential data stored within the system is exposed to potentially undesired uses.
Various common techniques have been utilized to provide some level of security to some devices. An example would be automobile radios and stereos which are often embedded with two parts that contain serialized identification that uses standard memory techniques such as common read-only-memories or static random access memories. These memory parts are inserted into the radios during the manufacturing phase. The result is a fixed permanent security code arrangement for that device only and no option exists to permit end users and owners to create a personalized identification code. This security technique typically relies upon whether a mating electronic piece, e.g., a faceplate, is connected to a main body. In order to secure the radio, a user must remove the mating piece in order to cripple the device and render it useless. This can be very inconvenient. No user known identification code capability is involved. The two parts, when mated and powered on, will verify that matching serialization exists before the device will function. This method does not lend itself to protecting multiple sub-components within the same system and is not easy to use.
Many techniques to secure electronic devices employ the use of software algorithms or passwords that are stored in readable memory or databases. Whenever software techniques are employed, circumvention is a possibility and detection of circumvention is difficult. In software based, password only protection schemes, the software itself is prone to alteration or modification which may permit specific or general unauthorized use or access to a system.